Gun control: pro, con, stuck in the middle

In a quiet neighborhood in Santee, one can find a world of difference in attitudes about gun control

His hospital recovery took weeks, and the .22-caliber bullet from the shooter’s revolver remains nestled near his heart. “Every so often he’ll tell me it hurts, more than usual. But he’s great. He stands tall. Back to his old wonderful self. I can’t believe how long it’s been and how old he is.”

This March, Raymond will turn 30. He works in construction, after giving up a childhood dream of being a police officer. (Lost interest after the shooting, Serrato said.) He has a girlfriend, a young lady with a kind smile. Serrato plans on opening up a day care center soon, and she enjoys tending to plants in her kitchen that never quite seem to thrive. “Poor things,” she said, and caressed their curling leaves.

"I’m caught in between. There’s no ‘for it’ or ‘against it.’ I’m so stuck in the middle. ... I’m on both sides. You know?” Elizabeth Serrato

Some victims of violence seek refuge in studying physical combat: martial arts, firearms training. Others go the advocacy route: joining an anti-gun campaign, a victims’ support network. Serrato didn’t take either route. Instead, she tried to rebuild the life her family had before the bullet.

These two halves of her life, the gun riddled early years, her son’s bullet-riddled lung in their paradise found, may explain why she’s so ambivalent about gun control. The problem with too many restrictions is that crooks find a way around them. That’s what happens when bad guys with weapons outnumber the good guys with weapons. Fresno. Southeast.

But she also knows what happens when a gem of a son gets shot by a revolver-toting maniac.

Her ideal America: everyone has the right to own whatever gun they want, but there would be a longer waiting period for purchases and better background checks. And she’s not a fan of assault weapons, especially for hunting. “Why would you like to kill your meat with an assault weapon?” she asked, a hint of provocation in her voice.

Would fewer guns or tighter restrictions have prevented what happened to her son? Maybe, maybe not. “There has to be something else,” she said, echoing the rest of the country’s search for a solution.

In the Serrato household, there are no guns allowed. No pretend guns, no imaginary guns. If her grandson points his finger at someone and goes pow! she stops him. “I sit down and talk to him about why I don’t like it.”

She is disgusted by the video games her sons — including Raymond — love to play. She flinches when the fake bullets turn those 2-D bodies into bloody carcasses. The games “are so real, so real now.” That’s the problem with kids today. They’re far too comfortable around firearms, around carnage. “They think it’s nothing.”